German Christmas words for the last fortnight before the holidays

Six Christmas pictures, a wreath and mistletoe and a present and a nativity and a snowman and Rudolph, with their German names hidden in the letters below. RUDOLPH is the freebie, spelled as your child already knows it, so the sheet opens with a win. After that the words ask for genuine attention, and most children need the picture list beside them throughout.

SCHNEEMANN takes ten letters to say snowman, and it is exactly that: SCHNEE is snow and MANN is man. MISTELZWEIG runs to eleven and finishes on ZWEIG, a twig. GESCHENK means present and KRANZ means wreath, and neither gives an English speaker anything to hold on to, so say them aloud a couple of times before the hunt begins.

Teachers tend to want this in the last week of term, when a class is restless and something quiet and seasonal helps. At home it fills the gap between decorating and dinner. KRIPPE is the word children ask about most: it names the crib in the nativity scene rather than the stable around it, which is worth explaining once. Nothing is timed and nothing is marked out of six, and a child who only wants to find Rudolph and the snowman has still met four other words on the way past them.